Eve Tushnet
Awesome tv-glitch wooden cabinet. Via SKTJ. Read more
Awesome tv-glitch wooden cabinet. Via SKTJ. Read more
blogs: 2. WATCH WHAT YOU SAY AROUND THE KIDS!!!!!! I can’t emphasize this enough, and everyone is continually stunned by the things people will ask in the hearing of children, from “Oh, is their Mom an addict?” or “Well, they aren’t your REAL kids are they” or “Are you going to adopt them?” or whatever. Not only is that stuff private, but it is HORRIBLE for the kids to hear people speculating about their families whom they love, or their... Read more
I watched The Boys Next Door because I read the following words in Kindertrauma’s review: 1985, Penelope Spheeris, Netflix streaming. Stopped reading right there. I wasn’t disappointed–although I will say that this isn’t a movie I’d recommend to most of my readers, even those who do like a lot of horror flicks. The Boys Next Door is sleazy and free of redeeming social value. As Kindertrauma notes, there’s a ton of in-character racism and homophobia and misogyny, and it’s ugly... Read more
Just finished watching The Devil’s Backbone, a powerful film which may have left me unsatisfied because I was expecting it to be something it didn’t want to be. The movie, by Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth), is set during the Spanish Civil War at an orphanage run by Communists. A young boy, Carlos, is brought to the orphanage. He’s beset by the local bully, and also begins to see a ghost, “the one who whispers,” a young boy like himself.... Read more
Build your own poem. Read more
at The Fix–I cannot get enough of these stories: I thought I knew exactly how my Ninth Step in AA would unfold. Instead, over a decade later, I’m still trying to make sense of people’s unpredictable reactions. more Read more
I’m at Acculturated. Don’t worry, it’s not an endorsement of “happiness research”: The title of this article is also the title of a 2009 study by economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers. The study looked at data from the United States and Europe, focusing on the period from the 1970s to the mid-2000s: a time of medical advances, the second wave of feminism, the rise of no-fault divorce and the personal computer. And also a period in which women got less... Read more
in Slate; via Jesse Walker; totally worth your time: …Of course, John Belushi did do all of those drugs, and there’s little doubt that the drug stories Woodward uses actually happened. But he just goes around piling up these stories with no regard for what is actually relevant. Just to compare and contrast: At one point, Woodward stops the narrative cold to document a single 24-hour coke binge for the better part of eight pages. Nothing much happens in these... Read more
at The Fix: …I’ll never forget seeing needle exchange done by activists for the first time, with addicted people almost unable to believe their eyes as strangers risked arrest or worse in some of the city’s worst neighborhoods to try to save them from HIV. People who looked sick, gray and miserable would suddenly light up; those who seemed unreachable would make eye contact and tentatively connect. It was one of the most spiritual things I have ever witnessed. The... Read more
at Aleteia, a new Catholic site: When I go to church on Sunday, I can look around and spot several other worshipers whom I know to be gay. We’re welcoming people at the door, organizing Sandwich Mondays for the homeless, serving at the altar, arranging flowers. This isn’t too unusual; gay people have spiritual lives and struggles like anybody else, and we often find that when we need to wrestle angels, we want to do it in a pew. And... Read more
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